Dear Brodie,
I have been following
the recent celebrations of the work of Christopher Hill, both in the lectures
given by Justin Champion at Newark and in London last November and in March
respectively, and in the online version of this lecture published by Verso
Books. I also read your September 2012 piece
(https://manyheadedmonster.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/christopher-hill-and-the-many-headed-monster/)
on the Many-Headed Monster blog last night and again this morning. The subject
is of interest to me as one of Christopher Hill's postgraduate pupils in the mid-1960s. I would agree with you that Hill's 1965 essay on the attitudes of
those members of the higher ranks of English society who commented on the
dangers of democracy in early modern England contained comments that were not
particularly novel and I would add that, had Hill examined, for example, the
records of the Assize Courts, he would have found sentiments just as seditious
as those uttered in the 1640s which he believed to have been expressed for the
very first time.
But these two points are incidental to
my main objections to Hill's position. His focus like that of Brian Manning was
on conflict, on political, religious and constitutional conflict underpinned by
economic and social changes which he thought undermined the established order
of early to mid-Stuart England. There is a lot of celebration in his works of
crowd violence in the streets of London, of the intimidation of nobles, gentry
and clergymen by people of middling and lower social status, of the appeal of
radical demands for abstract political and religious 'rights' and of the
failure of the English Revolution to consolidate fundamental changes not just
in England but throughout the British Isles. I think that this line of argument
rests upon a fallacious analysis of the main economic and social trends of the
period.
What Christopher Hill was
unaware of was the existence of powerful social bonds between landowners and
their tenants, bonds that went well beyond tenurial relationships and the
payment of rent and encompassed ties of affiliation in matters of politics and
religion, of marriage and friendship, that were beyond the reach of small
quasi-political groups like the Levellers and the Diggers or religious ones like
the Anabaptists or the Fifth Monarchists and others. I should add that this
under-appreciated nexus existed within the mercantile community and in its
external links to other economic and social groups. There is some evidence to
suggest that the position of the landed elite strengthened markedly between
1600 and 1640. If I am right, then the failure of the 'Revolution' was by no
means a surprise any more than the responses after the Restoration of 1660
were.
I realise that these criticisms of Hill
may run against the current but I was not persuaded by him in 1965 or
afterwards. With good wishes,
Christopher
